Topic: Nicely done update, Exhibition should be at the bottom of Using Arduino grouping (Read 2311 times)previous topic - next topic

The design is good, the usability is good, integration with smf seems to be stable, but one logical change in the topic groupings.

Exhibition should be part of Using Arduino, bar sport and exhibition have been somewhat synonymous before so it will be good for community discussions to separate the two, but with all of the support/usability moving to the top, it would be better for newer users if exhibition was moved to a more prominent and logical section with greater exposure.

What better way to encourage Arduino use than show what can be done with it?

Ok, Boz, I looked into it again ... and I think I answered too quick. I understand the logic behind your request, but the thing is that the "Using Arduino" category is more for technical aspects of the platform.

What I am thinking of is making a top category that shows the best of the topics and exhibition should be one of the chosen ones. I think this would be much more in line with the idea of portraiting the platform, don't you think?

Following on this topic, if I made the work of coding that "best of" which other topics should be linked in there? Opinions are welcome!

I think you already have the top categories right. from a new user perspective, they are not going to go digging very far, but more mature users will.

Think of the new user process like this, think of it as peeking in a door of a new pub/bar, you might peek in look around see what its like, see if they have what ya want, if you cant find it you might ask for a bit of help bounce back out a bit quick.

Thats the help on installation and all the electronics topics and guidance in the first forum section.

As you get more familiar with the place you start to go deeper inside, look around more, maybe chat with the guy at the dart board, throw something on the jukebox or even karoke.

This is exhibition, showing off and bonding getting to know the regulars a bit more. Thats how the exhibition section seems to flow naturally to me, just my opinion. not just heres the fix but look whats cool too, you dont have to dig deep to find it.

As an aside to the pub allegory, I also think if you go back and look at the old exhibition you will see that a tremendous amount of technical knowledge discussion happened in the exhibition threads as more people asked how something was done or critiqued and kibitzed the item being displayed, it didnt function as just a broadcast show and tell but more a show and discuss.

And i think that section, the learning and introduction section of USING ARDUINO lends it self to that, where as at the bottom it is more of a broadcast and regular hang out section.

Back to the allegory.....Now the pub is feeling more natural the place is rockin to you, its your regular hang out, they know your name and that cranky bunch at the end of the bar that gave ya the hairy eyeball, when you walked into their bar and asked the name of the drink, which you now have named after you because its YOU RE DRINK, and because you are a regular, they dont intimidate you so much, in fact you can hold your own with them now.

Thats the community section, a little isolating and you need to grow into it, explore the site deeper to find it at the bottom, you have to explore some to get there, but it isnot quite the front door baptism by fire, dont you know how to use a search engine to find a drink nme, we knew all these drinks years ago mentality that sometimes arises in some pubs (and IRL in the the previous forum flow).

So in my pub/bar story you can see a natural process come out of your menu choices and it flows fairly well (with the exception of the topics section which is a bit redundant and I think confusing to the flow)

We ll call the topics section the side graffitti room in the pub story, not quite lit right, a bit off the beaten path,gets all kinds of stuff written all over it because its a bit out of the normal flow pattern, just seems a bit out of place.)

But I still believe the new user process would flow best if you moved the exhibition ( karoke ) up so more than the regulars can find it and enjoy it.

As to your best of, Im not sure if I understand how you mean it to work, but if it is anything like the news section of the old forum where it has to rely on say an editorial oversite, it may fall to similar fates, and it may be better to keep it less controlled (open sourced even ) to keep the flow fully organic rather than having to be tended to a lot.

I hope at least some of this makes sense and isnt too esoteric an explanation of my opinion of why you should move the exhibition to the bottom of the Using Arduino and now in review possibly reconsider the TOPICS section.

The fact that I can find a real world interaction with a natural flow in the process to liken the menu and user flow to means you got good usability design involved in the final outcome, and as I said in my first post it all in all is pretty good all the way around for such a big leap.

First, thanks for the explanation. I have to say that I completely agree with the paradigm of use you see for the website. As a newbie, first thing is getting impressed, second learning something, then going in depth.

That is why our "homepage" is the reference and not the forum. The forum is for the discussion of topics. Something we are working with is personalized websites, now that we have user profiles, we can create something like iGoogle, where you can get your preferred things in place, subscription to feeds and so on. The kind of vision you talk about fits very much in our roadmap, it is just that it will take some time. First thing for us was not to release the forum, but to release that menu bar on top of the page. That gives you access to the whole Arduino ecosystem. Now we will work out all the other nice features.

Sorry if at this point I cannot spend a lot of time writing about visions and so on, but the new forum is generating a lot of traffic I need to attend to. Please keep the discussion going, once the initial flood and bug-fixing has been done, I will have more time to work with this at the conceptual and practical levels.

Oh, seriously, I appreciate your opinion, we should keep talking about this, sometimes we are so busy with the technical details that we forget about the details that make people get interested and in the end, without people, Arduino is nothing.